May 28, 2012 · 8:10 am

A Blessing for our Sons and Daughters

by Cheri Scheff Levitan (Atlanta, GA)

On Friday night, the eve of the Sabbath, it is customary to bless one’s children.  The traditional blessing for boys is “May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe” (Genesis 48:20). Why be like them?  These brothers — contrary to Cain and Abel — lived in peace and set good examples for their family and community.  While having noble traits and aspirations, my preference is to bless my son with, “May God help you become and do the best YOU that you can in this world.”  

The traditional prayer for girls is “May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.”  The movie Fiddler on the Roof, however, offers a subtle change in its song, Sabbath Prayer.  Instead of repeating the customary blessing offered for girls, a challenge comes in the form of “May you be like Ruth and like Esther.”  This statement calmly floats by in the song without ruffling any feathers; either because it is not noticed or no one cares to delve into its actual meaning.

Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah are the matriarchs of the Jewish faith.  They played strong supporting roles in the achievements of their husbands– Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Ruth and Esther are not considered to be matriarchs, yet they are the only two women to have books in the Hebrew Bible that are named for them.  They were strong women who played leading roles and took matters into their own hands to ensure the continuity of the Jewish people.  The prayer from Fiddler is therefore saying, “Be like Ruth and Esther, smart and independent women, who not only take control of their own destinies, but model and guide the future of the Jewish people as well.”

The Book of Ruth is read on the holiday of Shavuot and the Book of Esther on Purim.  A careful reading of each reveals two very different women, from different times and backgrounds, who accomplish tremendous things. Ruth, a non-Jew, chooses to leave her own people to join the Israelites.  She exhibits acts of faith, modesty, integrity, bravery, and loyalty.  The Davidic line and the Messiah ultimately descend from her.  Esther, by contrast, initially does not display the noble acts for which Ruth is known.  She hides her Jewish name and background to put herself on display to win a beauty contest, and she marries the non-Jewish king.  But, once she becomes Queen of Persia, she ultimately risks her crown and life to save the Jewish people from Haman’s anti-Semitism.  In the end, Esther displays tremendous cleverness, bravery, loyalty and leadership.  It also is interesting to note that the men in their lives, Boaz and King Ahashverosh (a non-Jew) respectively, give Ruth and Esther the support, deference, and respect they deserve.

The wish “May you be like Ruth and like Esther” is an impossibly daunting challenge that is offered to both men and women as well as to Jews and those of other faiths.  It is difficult to be like one of these women, let alone both of them simultaneously.  Regardless, we cannot ignore this message.  The stories of Ruth and Esther reflect very important challenges, as well accomplishments, that have taken place throughout Jewish history.  They also highlight changes — changes in identity, ways of living Jewishly, and ways of imagining what is possible for both women and men — that we must face today.

What kind of blessing or wish do you have for your child?

Cheri Scheff Levitan shares stories and thoughts about being Jewish on her blog, Through Jewish Eyes (http://throughjewisheyes.com/), where this excerpt first appeared. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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May 21, 2012 · 8:24 am

A Poet’s Reflections on Approaching the Edge

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

In looking at my two Holocaust poems–“Accident of Fate,” The Jewish Writing Project, May 14, 2012 (http://tinyurl.com/cpywfs5) and “One Holocaust Movie Too Many,” The Jewish Writing Project, August 22, 2011  (http://tinyurl.com/d7dt7po)–I can’t help notice that there is a sizable difference in perspective.

In “One Holocaust Movie Too Many,” the earlier one, I am the outsider looking in. I see pictures of the Holocaust, but the screen filters me from reality. I am there and not there, separated from the horror via celluloid and watching from a distance in present time where the world is safe and Jews can be proud of their heritage. In the poem, I do not hear the “awful trains,” except in a vague generational memory. I am as distant as anyone who has not been through the camps.

In “Accident of Fate,” there is a closer, deeper perspective. Yes, there is also the movie screen, but I wished in this poem to state much more emphatically that my involvement in the horror is much more than a memory. It is a feeling that I have been spared, granted life, but should not have been. Except for this accident of fate, I should have been in the barracks waiting to be put to death. The poem raises vividly an unresolved philosophical dilemma: why was I allowed to live while others were marched to the chambers? I realize, of course, there is no answer to this question. In the latter poem I am singed by the fires of the crematorium. I am there – far more so than in the first poem where I exist as a curious spectator.

My different vision for each poem was cast by personal history. My parents escaped Vienna in 1939, and I was born during the war in safe Switzerland. On some level (though not as much as my father), I have suffered from some kind of “survivor’s guilt,” never fully escaping the thought that I, very easily, could have been one more nameless victim.

I never truly understood my father’s torture, but I am beginning to see now that I am not totally unscathed from the horrible history. Though I did not fall in, my toe has always touched the rim of this terrible abyss. In the second poem I move closer to the edge.

Each time I approach the edge, I find myself compelled to write.

Here is a poem that I wrote after thinking about the process of moving closer and closer to that edge:

My Father’s Soul

Two Holocaust poems written months apart,
both describing horrors seen on the silver screen,
both touching on my escape from
the fires of the crematoriums.
In the first poem, I serve as spectator
seeing the barracks from a distance,
realizing I have been fortunate enough
to live free in a Jewish neighborhood.
In the second poem, I am the participant
with the growing sense
a part of me, a part of my father
still lives among the prisoners,
and what’s more, I have no business
being a survivor, being allowed
to live free in a Jewish neighborhood.
I am my father’s son;
his survivor’s guilt is my guilt.
His soul is my soul as I put
one foot ahead of the other,
casting my eyes upward at the smoke.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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May 14, 2012 · 7:00 am

Accident of Fate

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

No such thing as
too many concentration camp movies.
No such thing as
too many concentration camp books.
I have seen and read many, but hardly enough
for somewhere inside of me,
I know I should have been there,
there in any camp you choose
with a number on my arm,
and my bones sticking out of my body.
I do not know how to call it,
accident of fate or God’s hand,
but I have been found guilty of the soft life
here in this land of bountiful
where I can decide which restaurant to patron,
or what popular play to attend.
I feel I should be someplace else,
rousted out of the barracks at two a.m.,
hoping to be spared another beating
or a final trip to the chambers.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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May 7, 2012 · 8:29 am

Light Music

by  Ilan Braun (Le Tour-du-Parc, Brittany, France)

Have you ever heard
On a summer evening
The violins and the cellos sobbing
While high in the sky
Swallows are  dancing
A place where the bows on too tight cords
Are running up faster than life
Faster than death
Where  grey-faced musicians
In spite of all
Smile  to the children around
Where tears flow like streams
Stemming from springs
Believed to be forever dried up
Do you hear, still,
This light music?

Ilan Braun, a retired French journalist who wrote for L’Arche, says that “This poem was inspired by the tragedy of the Terezinstadt concentration camp.”

A poet, writer, painter and amateur historian on the Holocaust and post-war Jewish clandestine immigration to Israel, he has lived in Israel and Australia and visited over 30 countries.

You can read more of his work in Labyrinthe poétique: De la terre au ciel (Publibook, Paris, 2009) and in English (“The Oak of Tears”) in Under One Canopy: Readings in Jewish Diversity, edited by Karen Primack (Kulanu Inc. Silver Spring, MD. 2003).

For more information about his work, visit: www.ilanbraun.dr.ag

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April 30, 2012 · 9:32 am

The Old Synagogue

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

The old synagogue sits stubbornly closed
amid the open stores along Ave. U.,
its two main doors locked shut
as passersby speak Russian and Chinese.
For me, the shul  might as well lie
on the other side of a mountain pass,
requiring a leap of faith I am unable to make
since the days long ago when punch ball
prevailed over prayer and time spent inside
seemed more detention than worship.
Maybe if the doors were open just a bit,
and I could peek inside, the deep dovening
would entice, but because the doors are closed,
mostly in my own mind, I’ll walk on by,
sit at my favorite diner seat and contemplate
why my life spins in spiritual confusion.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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April 23, 2012 · 7:12 am

Shabbat: Our tool for attention literacy

by Beth Kissileff (Pittsburgh, PA)

At my book group last night, one of the members told us that she had to fire a student working in her lab the next day. It was not a task she relished, but he was not performing his assigned tasks. Instead of following directions, he was checking his email or texting on his smartphone.

“I don’t understand it. He has a degree in molecular biology. He’s not stupid. But he just does not know how to pay attention. I can’t have someone like that working for me,” she explained.

We were regaled with other tales of people oblivious to those around them— a job candidate who spent the whole time checking his email while he was being given a tour of his new potential workplace and taken to lunch (guess who did not get that job), and a panel where one of the three people on the panel, speaking to a large group, had his laptop open, typing, during the time he was supposed to be a panelist and engage with an audience.

Where has our collective attention gone? How can we learn to exert some degree of control over these devices that are everywhere in our lives?

There is a simple and ancient low-tech answer: Shabbat.

Shabbat is a time to simply exist in the world, not to engage in any of the 39 rabbinically described forms of work that make a mark on the world, but to appreciate and accept what is. The enforced rest of a traditional Sabbath, with a break from the electronic distraction of emails and iPhones, creates an ability to focus and notice the world from a sensory perspective in real rather than in virtual time. It helps with endurance because even if a week is crazy, you know there will be a day off to look forward to. A stoppage of time, a cessation from work. In my Shabbat world, people take time to prepare special food, to sit and eat meals with each other, to be nicer than during the rushed work week, to converse, interact, and learn a bit of Jewish text.

Shabbat is a way to gain what writer Howard Rheingold calls “attention literacy.” http://blog.sfgate.com/rheingold/2009/04/20/attention-literacy/ The ability NOT to multitask (which has been shown by all measures to fail horribly at getting the requisite tasks done because all are done more slowly and less well when one’s attention is focused on multiple variables) will soon become a rare and sought after ability. Employers will flock for potential employees who are able to master the self-control to put down their devices and pay attention. Those of us able to turn off and unplug will be in the minority in the 21st century and valuable to both ourselves for our unusual abilities to focus, as well as to employers for our unusual skills.

The other advantage of turning off electronics for 25 hours is that it allows us to be present to those in our physical orbit. I worry about how my children are learning (or, rather, not learning) to interact with others. Although my daughter can spend the whole day texting, I don’t know whether this deepens her relationships and adds to her friendships. When complaining about this to a psychiatrist friend with a daughter the same age, she said that teens are “connected but at arm’s length.” That is it exactly, the distance that a text or an email puts between people. It is not the same as a letter with the physical imprint of another.

I spent hours as a teen swooning over letters from boys, felt a thrill to see my name written by him. Hearing someone’s voice directly on the phone is a completely different process from the impersonal one of seeing pixels on a screen, whether on a laptop, iPad or cellphone. If you use no electronic devices for a day, Shabbat forces you to be in relationship with those around you. It is the only time during the week my family of five can be found in the same room, reading, together without risk of a phone to disturb us.

I have been riding a bicycle as my main form of transportation for the last few months. Recently, there was a problem with my bike’s brakes. I didn’t realize it at first, but, gradually, I noticed that no matter how hard I squeezed, the bike would not come to a complete stop. I finally knew that I absolutely had to get the bike fixed when I was going down a steep hill which had a well trafficked street at its base. I clutched the brakes and panicked, realizing I was still careening madly down the hill with no hope for stopping as I was getting closer and closer to the hectic intersection with its whizzing cars. I finally jumped off the bike, banging up my middle-aged knees, in order to get the bike to come to a stop.

I went to my local bike store the next day. When I rode down the hill with $73 of mechanical work on my bicycle, the experience was totally different. I was in control of the ride because I knew that I could stop when I wanted. The pressure of my hands on the brakes slowed me down, and I came to a complete stop, at will. I felt so relaxed and in complete control of every aspect of my trip because I knew that I could control my ride.

For me, this is the perfect metaphor for Shabbat. It’s a day that gives us control of our week knowing we can put some brakes on and stop all kinds of distractions and work from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Shabbat allows me to stop and think so I can manage my to-do lists. Stopping clears away small things so I can focus on larger ones. That kind of attention literacy is something we all need.

Beth Kissileff is the editor of the forthcoming anthology Reading Genesis (Continuum Books, 2013), and has received writing fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo and the Lilly Endowment. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in JewishFiction.net, Tablet, Shma, Zeek, the Jerusalem Report and Jerusalem Post, Moment Magazine, the Forward, the New York Jewish Week, the Jewish Review of Books, Hadassah Magazine, Slate.com, and the News and Observer (Raleigh, NC). She uses her brakes in Pittsburgh, PA where she lives with her family.

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April 16, 2012 · 7:50 am

Writing Practice: Leaving Egypt Behind

Every year when we sit down to begin our Seder, I look around the table, amazed at the effort that it took for all of us–family and friends– to come together.

We have finished cleaning and shopping and cooking and preparing the Seder table. It’s time to open the Hagaddah and recite Kiddush over the First Cup, and then read the first words of the story: “This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.”

Each year I’m awed by the sound of these words, the first words of the Hagaddah, as they ring out across the ages. They are words that sing of our people’s endurance and faith, and they remind me as we wash our hands, lift our cups, break our matzah, dip our herbs, open the door for Elijah, and sing our favorite song about the little goat that we have been given a precious gift.

On Passover, we celebrate not only our gift of freedom but the gift of being Jews and sharing a memory of communal faith in whatever it is that supports us as we step into the unknown, one foot after the other, day after day, year after year, century after century.

Imagine what it must have felt like to leave Egypt. We abandoned everything we knew–the comfort of a regular routine, a place to cook, eat, share stories, make love, and sleep every night–all for an unknown future.

Freedom meant learning to live with not knowing where we’d settle the next night or the night after that, not knowing where we’d find food or ways to defend ourselves or a clear path into the wilderness.

For hundreds of years we lived as slaves. How could we have stepped away from all that we knew? How could we have gone from the heartache of slavery to full independence in one night? How could we have taken such a huge leap of faith from the known to the unknown–into the sea and beyond?

Every year, as we prepare for our Seder, it’s a struggle to leave behind whatever I’m doing, to pick up stakes and move on, so that I can focus on the holiday. And then for the week of the holiday it’s a struggle to forego hametz and eat matzah. But then I remember that we managed centuries ago to pack up our belongings and put one foot in front of the other and make our way into the unknown.

Egypt became a memory, a place to go back to one day, and our future became our destination, the place where we could find the freedom to become whoever we were meant to be.

What will you do with your freedom this year? How will you live your life as a Jew now that you are no longer a slave?

Will you celebrate the many possibilities waiting for you? Or will you mourn the past and all that you left behind?

Before taking another step, can you pause a moment and write about the challenges of stepping into the unknown?

How does freedom give you the opportunity to explore a new, different side of yourself?

What does it feel like to look at the world after leaving Egypt now that you’ve passed through the sea and reached dry land on the other side?

Can you hear the lamentations of those still unwilling to leave Egypt behind?

Or do you hear the joyous sound of Miriam and the women dancing with their timbrels and singing the Song of the Sea?

Bruce Black

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April 9, 2012 · 2:16 pm

Conjugations of God

by Ilan Braun (Le Tour-du-Parc, Brittany, France)

There is no past or imperfect tense
In the Creator’s Utterance
Everything is present and perfect
What has been proclaimed at the Dawn of Time
Still rings hollow to our ears
The Creator cannot be ‘past’
He is beyond Time
Neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow
He is the Fullness and the Unity of Time
The Whole, the Infinite
Continuum
He is permanent
He is “the” Permanence
At every billionth of a second of our lives
Within each heartbeat
HE IS!
Not human conjugations of Time
Futile and morbid
How to conjugate the time of God?
Just as we can not really explain the swelling of waves
Crashing on the shore
GOD is the first wave
Breaking on humanity
Its divine spray wetting our faces and our souls

Ilan Braun is a retired French journalist who wrote for L’Arche. A poet, writer, painter and amateur historian on the Holocaust and post-war Jewish clandestine immigration to Israel, he has lived in Israel and Australia and visited over 30 countries.

You can read more of his work in Labyrinthe poétique: De la terre au ciel (Publibook, Paris, 2009) and in English (“The Oak of Tears”) in Under One Canopy: Readings in Jewish Diversity, edited by Karen Primack (Kulanu Inc. Silver Spring, MD. 2003).

For more information about his work, visit: www.ilanbraun.dr.ag

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April 2, 2012 · 8:26 am

Memorable Seders

By Helga Harris (Sarasota, FL)

“Look at David,” Aunt Sophie exclaimed. “It happened again. Remember last year, when he fell asleep at the Seder table and his sweet curly brown hair dipped into the matzo ball soup?”

I remember my earliest Passover Seders. I was five or six, and we sat around a beautifully set table surrounded by many family members at my grandparents’ house. Most memorable was my red-bearded Opa in a flowing white caftan. Reclining on a grand wing chair with a propped up fluffy pillow, he looked like an elderly angel in the light of the silver candelabra, which gently glowed on everything.

Some of the foods on the Seder plate – parsley, horseradish, hard-boiled eggs, onions, and matzo – we children were not anxious to consume. What we hungered for was the golden chicken soup with floating matzo balls. However, we weren’t permitted to eat a morsel before the formal recitation of every word of the first half of the Haggadah was read. It took more than an hour.

Nothing changed except the location when, years later, the Seder was held at my parents’ home. Although older, I wiggled impatiently in my seat. The reading bored me. It was all in Hebrew. Only my father understood the words. But when the Four Questions were asked by the youngest male child, everyone perked up.

Four cups of wine were consumed at the Seder table. A special goblet of wine was filled to the brim and reserved for Elijah, the prophet. The night’s drama took place when a child was assigned the honor of opening the front door to let Elijah enter. It was always nighttime, and my heart raced as I imagined all sorts of frightening images on my way to the entrance. It seemed an eternity until I was permitted to close the door. Everyone looked at the wine. Had a sip been taken? We agreed that the silver goblet was only a bit depleted. The elders explained: “Children, Elijah visits so many homes; he only drinks a little at each house.”

For the past two decades, the Seders have been held at my house. Now that I’m the matriarch, I have radically changed the tradition. At our table we have relatives and guests of varying races and religious persuasions: Jews, Methodists, Catholics, atheists, and one Muslim. The Haggadah has been rewritten in English by my family. The revisions give women recognition, long overdue, for the years of hardships that they endured and for their years of leadership, too.

One year, my 82-year-old sister-in-law, read The Four Questions (instead of the youngest boy). Another time, my 10-year-old granddaughter was chosen to lead the Seder. My father never would have permitted it. We’ve come a long way.

At our Seder we eat gefilte fish and matzo ball soup before reading the Haggadah. The most relevant aspect of our Seder is the homogenous mix of people sitting happily at our table. reminding us that life is good.

Helga Harris was born in Berlin, Germany, and moved with her family to New York City in 1938.  Throughout her life Helga has painted and has had numerous art exhibits in New York, Miami and Sarasota. She is the author of  Dear Helga, Dear Ruth, a memoir, and has published several articles in The Sarasota Herald Tribune and The Tampa Tribune, as well as stories in several magazines and anthologies, including We Were There, published by the St.Petersburg Holocaust Museum.

This story originally appeared in The Tampa Tribune and online at Tampa Bay Online. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

For more information about Helga, visit:

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/11/16/Floridian/Dear_friends.shtml

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2747937-dear-helga-dear-ruth

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March 26, 2012 · 8:05 am

The Mystery My Mother Left Behind

by Lev Raphael (Okemos, MI)

My late mother loved the New York Times crossword and she loved reading mysteries. Born in Poland, she said the puzzle helped her perfect her English; she never explained the specific appeal of crime novels, but she was a huge fan of Agatha Christie, John Creasey, Frances and Richard Lockridge, and Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. I read almost all the mystery library books she brought home; they were always better than the books assigned in school. On my own, I discovered the comic mysteries of Phoebe Atwood Taylor. While my mother enjoyed a good joke and had an Imogene Coca kind of laugh, those books weren’t serious enough for her.

It wasn’t until after my mother died in 1999 that I discovered profound and unsettling mysteries in her own life that I’m still trying to unravel. My mother was a Holocaust survivor. She lost her family, her home, her freedom — and would have lost her life if the war had lasted any longer than it did. She spoke about those war years sparingly, and when she did, I was too young or too overwhelmed to ask the right questions that would have yielded more information.

Going through her things after the funeral, I found something shocking in her closet. My mother had kept the concentration camp uniform she was wearing when she was liberated by the Americans in April 1945. You’ve probably seen “dresses” like these in movies and documentaries: thin, crudely sewn, it was gray with purplish stripes (though the colors may have changed over the decades). My father told me she’d washed it after the war, but he couldn’t say why she had kept this reminder of her horrible brutalization and the nightmare of seeing her world ground to dust.

I knew the names of the camps my mother had been in and contacted one via email but nobody could find records for her. This was troubling, since I knew that despite bombings and German attempts to destroy files, records existed for many camps. And then I tried again, this time using the number on her uniform.

A world of mysteries opened up to me. For at least part of the war, my mother, Helena Klaczko, was listed in several Nazi records as Lidja Garbel. How do I know this Garbel and my mother were the same woman? Because the insanely detailed prisoner card for my mother at Buchenwald lists her parents’ name, her street address in Poland, her education and her birth date. All the information matches what I know to be fact. Whatever her name, the woman with that number on her camp dress was the woman listed on the card and indisputably my mother.

But why did she have another name? The mystery deepened when I discovered that in a transport from one camp to another, there was a woman whose number was right before my mother’s and whose last name was also Garbel. So somehow, for some reason, my mother took this other woman’s last name as hers. But why? And why Lidja? Was it possible there had been an actual Lidja Garbel whose name my mother had assumed for some reason? The sister of this Frida Garbel?

My father had no idea what the answers were or what any of it could mean. And when I told him that this same Buchenwald prisoner card said my mother was married to a Mikhail Garbel, whereabouts “unknown,” he scoffed. “People said all kinds of things during the war.”

I had written a handful of Nick Hoffman mysteries by this point, and even been reviewed in the New York Times my mother revered. Sadly, my mother never got to read any of them because she was so sick when they started coming. But nothing in any of them matched these real-life mysteries whose solutions I have pursued in many directions, without answer. Sometimes I wonder if there really was a Mikhail Garbel or even a Lidja Garbel, if both were completely invented. Sometimes I think, what if my mother was married before she met my father? Sometimes I think, “There’s a book in this, if only I can find it.” And I wonder if my mother read mysteries not just as a fan, but as someone who had turned her own life into something mysterious.

Lev Raphael is a prize-winning pioneer in American-Jewish literature, and has been publishing fiction and nonfiction about the Second Generation since 1978. The author of twenty-two books which have been translated into almost a dozen languages, he has spoken about his work in hundreds of venues on three continents. His fiction and creative non-fiction are widely taught at American colleges and universities, and his work has been the subject of numerous academic articles, papers, and books. A former public radio book show host and newspaper columnist, he can be found on the web at http://www.levraphael.com.  He blogs on books for The Huffington Post and reviews for the on-line literary magazine Bibliobuffet.com.

You can check out his latest book, the Jewish historical novel Rosedale in Love, at http://www.levraphael.com/rosedale.html

This piece first appeared on The Huffington Post, and it’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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